Road Trip

It drives me nuts

  when I feel it happening.

I mean — it doesn’t seem

  to matter at the time:

I can be shaving

  or washing the dishes

  or clipping my by-then

  two-mile long toenails.

Most often,

  it happens when I’m driving —

  and that can be scary:

I suddenly find myself ten miles

  from where I last remember,

  instantly transported by some 

  god-like force,

  some Rodenberry device.

My watch says ten minutes have

  evaporated, too.

Stricken, I see Streiber’s

  ovoid aliens

  inhabiting my missing time —

I see long, sleek, shiny tables and

  sharp, odd-shaped instruments

  I know instantly are meant

  for discrete bodily intrusions

  that leave no scars —

But maybe a rash will start,

  then perfect rings of sores!

And, shit! there I am,

  doing sixty-five down Ben White,

  and I start to itch like crazy

  in places where you

  can’t scratch

  with a mini-van of nuns

  alongside

and I wonder, “Oh, God,”

  (’cause suddenly

  I believe in God)

  “Oh, God, what have they

  done to me?”

They might have just infected me

  with some gruesome alien germ

  that will burst through my chest

  when I eat lima beans!

Or, “Oh, God!”

  (ever more reverently)

  “WHAT IF I’M PREGNANT!?”

But it’s not really the missing time

  that matters —

  or any real or imagined

  ramifications.

I know I’ve just zoned out

  for awhile —

Put myself on autopilot

  while completing some mundane,

  boring, or routine task.

  It’s common. Everybody does it.

Some of you are doing it now.

What bothers me is

  what happens when I realize

  it happens.

Bang! My mind’s off to the races,

  filling memories’ gaps with

  wild and lurid escapades

  of what adventures

  might have been

  while I was absent.

Each thought evokes another,

  and another,

  each one more absurd —

And I can’t stop it,

  the fantasy continues:

  words pour and pile

  upon each other,

  each insane off-shoot

  sprouting crazily,

blasting skyward and beyond,

  building bizarre and bacchanalian

  fabrications

  from improbable black hole cloth!

And then it hits me:

  ten

  more

  miles

  have passed.